Language Boot Camp

More of this Feature • The Best Defense    Join the Discussion "I've been thinking about the role of Americans' foreign language expertise—or glaring lack of it—in relation to terrorism." AIRONEVERDE    Related Resources • Italian Translation • The Rage and The Pride • La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio    From Other Guides • Anti-Terrorism • Ground Zero • War on Terrorism • WTC Memorial    Elsewhere on the Web • JNCL–NCLIS • NFLC • NSEP

Can learning a foreign language reduce the possibility of terrorist attacks in the US? One of the more eye–opening disclosures to arise after September 11 was the shocking lack of qualified linguists in languages such as Dari, Urdu, and Hindi. With the inevitable finger pointing, it quickly became apparent that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had no one to interpret or translate crucial documents that might have warned security experts about the plans or helped in some way to avoid the attacks. Perhaps more frustrating is the fact that the US already had national programs and defense institutions specifically designed to address this issue.

Thems Fightin' Words
The ability to speak other languages has long been recognized as a critical skill for national security and homeland defense. In November 1941, the War Department established the Military Intelligence Service Language School, the forerunner of today's Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, which eventually trained over 6,000 linguists, most of Japanese–American heritage. These US–born second–generation Japanese–Americans, commonly known as "Nisei," were assigned to US combat units throughout the world, primarily in the Pacific theater, supporting US forces with critical intelligence skills such as interpretation, translation, and interrogation.

To underscore the importance that being able to speak other languages provides to national defense, the school was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for the period of May 1942 to September 1945, citing: "...The Military Intelligence Service not only played key roles in battlefield situations, they also provided United States forces with an unprecedented amount of intimate, authoritative, detailed, and timely information on enemy forces to support planning and execution of combat operations..."

Learn a Language, Fight the War on Terrorism
Today the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) is the primary foreign language training institution within the Department of Defense (DoD). The DLIFLC conducts full–time foreign language resident training, exercising technical control of nonresident foreign language training in the Defense Foreign Language Program. The DLIFLC provides foreign language services to DoD, government agencies, and foreign governments. The DLIFLC even hosts a Worldwide Language Competition with games in the competition such as Listening, Reading, Spot Report, PowerWord and Twenty Questions.

Drill Those Verbs
The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), founded in 1986, is the nation's principal institutional resource for strategic planning and drafting of policy for language in the United States. As a leading resource for studies and programming on cross–cultural communication and language, the Center's mission "...is to improve the capacity of the US to communicate in languages other than English...through intensive and innovative strategic planning and development with globalized institutions, organizations and enterprises throughout the US."

The NFLC recently released Language and National Security in the 21st Century, a landmark study in the role language plays in national well–being. This study determined that:

Tomorrow's military force requires global capabilities, not only in terms of operational strength, but with regards to the quality of its people and their ability to adapt to different cultures and situations. In this dynamic and complex environment, regional expertise, language proficiency, and cross–cultural communications skills have become essential to our strategic success.

The political, social, economic, and technological developments of the last decade dictate that foreign language be treated on a par with mathematics and science as vital to national security and a direct federal responsibility deserving of significant federal support.

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